Palingenesis

I lay upon the headland-height, and listened
To the incessant sobbing of the sea
    In caverns under me,
And watched the waves, that tossed and fled and glistened,
Until the rolling meadows of amethyst
    Melted away in mist.

Then suddenly, as one from sleep, I started;
For round about me all the sunny capes
    Seemed peopled with the shapes
Of those whom I had known in days departed,
Apparelled in the loveliness which gleams
    On faces seen in dreams.

A moment only, and the light and glory
Faded away, and the disconsolate shore
    Stood lonely as before;
And the wild-roses of the promontory
Around me shuddered in the wind, and shed
    Their petals of pale red.

There was an old belief that in the embers
Of all things their primordial form exists,
    And cunning alchemists
Could re-create the rose with all its members
From its own ashes, but without the bloom,
    Without the lost perfume.

Ah me! what wonder-working, occult science
Can from the ashes in our hearts once more
    The rose of youth restore?
What craft of alchemy can bid defiance
To time and change, and for a single hour
    Renew this phantom-flower?

"O, give me back," I cried, "the vanished splendors,
The breath of morn, and the exultant strife,
    When the swift stream of life
Bounds o'er its rocky channel, and surrenders
The pond, with all its lilies, for the leap
    Into the unknown deep!"

And the sea answered, with a lamentation,
Like some old prophet wailing, and it said,
    "Alas! thy youth is dead!
It breathes no more, its heart has no pulsation;
In the dark places with the dead of old
    It lies forever cold!"

Then said I, "From its consecrated cerements
I will not drag this sacred dust again,
    Only to give me pain;
But, still remembering all the lost endearments,
Go on my way, like one who looks before,
    And turns to weep no more."

Into what land of harvests, what plantations
Bright with autumnal foliage and the glow
    Of sunsets burning low;
Beneath what midnight skies, whose constellations
Light up the spacious avenues between
    This world and the unseen!

Amid what friendly greetings and caresses,
What households, though not alien, yet not mine,
    What bowers of rest divine;
To what temptations in lone wildernesses,
What famine of the heart, what pain and loss,
    The bearing of what cross!

I do not know; nor will I vainly question
Those pages of the mystic book which hold
    The story still untold,
But without rash conjecture or suggestion
Turn its last leaves in reverence and good heed,
    Until "The End" I read.